DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF A PROCESS MATURITY MODEL IN THE DOMAIN OF INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT

As information systems continue to expand their reach into the work process of the construction industry, communication and information exchange that traditionally occurs between humans is increasingly being replaced with automated or semi-automated information exchange between computer systems. These computer-based communications must be more formally defined and designed than the human-based communications that they replace. We are researching techniques to formally represent design information transactions within the construction industry. As part of this work, we are interested in assessing the degree to which information exchange processes are formalized and managed. This paper focuses on the development and application of an Infrastructure Management-Process Maturity Model (IM-PMM) to benchmark the degree of formalization of work and communication processes in the infrastructure management field. The proposed IM-PMM evolved through reviewing a set of relevant maturity models. It uses a scale of five levels of process maturity and is based on three core dimensions (process, actor role, and information definition) to benchmark work processes, plus one dimension (message definition) to benchmark communication processes. The proposed IM-PMM has been applied in the domain of infrastructure management and attempts to benchmark only the asset inventory and condition assessment reporting processes using researcheradministered structured interview approach. From the results of the survey, it is concluded that communication processes in the area of infrastructure management are typically accomplished in an ad hoc (undefined and unstructured) manner, emphasizing the need for improvement if advanced information systems are to be deployed to support efficient management of infrastructure systems.